Telling tale of confectionery kings (From York Press)

Telling tale of confectionery kings

12:10pm Monday 20th February 2012 in Features By Stephen Lewis

A new book to be published next month ahead of the opening of York’s new chocolate attraction traces the history of all three York chocolate and sweet makers – Rowntree’s, Terry’s and Craven’s – in ravishing detail. STEPHEN LEWIS looks over an advance copy.

THE Spanish conquistadores went to Mexico in the early 1500s in search of gold. But they discovered another treasure, too: a drink made of a mysterious substance the Aztecs called cacahuatl.

Montezuma, the Aztec god-king, reputedly drank 50 cups a day in the belief it would give him “success with women”.

The Spanish quickly introduced chocolate, as the drink came to be known, to Europe. But the English proved oddly resistant. In his entertaining and sumptuously-illustrated forthcoming book History of Chocolate in York, local author Paul Chrystal describes how, in 1579, English sailors who seized a Spanish ship threw a cargo of chocolate overboard after describing it as “sheep dung”.

It wasn’t until more than a century later that chocolate began to catch on in England. And predictably enough it was a Parisian shopkeeper who opened the first chocolate shop on these shores: in London in 1657. An advertisement ran in a London newspaper a couple of years later, Paul records.

It read: “An excellent West India drink called chocolate, in Bishopsgate Street, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house being the first man who did sell it in England.” Sadly, the advert doesn’t give the Frenchman’s name.

It may have been slow to catch on; but once it arrived, chocolate quickly took off.

Paul’s book gives an entertaining account of the early history of chocolate on these shores, but it is when the story reaches York that his book really takes off.

It many ways York’s chocolate story begins with a Quaker called Mary Tuke. In 1725, a spinster aged 30, she set up a grocery business – first in Walmgate, then in Castlegate.

Paul writes entertainingly of her battles with the York Merchant Adventurers’ Company to be able to do business in the city. She ended up trading without a licence – and actually defied a court order preventing her doing business. But in 1728 the Merchant Adventurers relented, and Mary’s business thrived.

In 1746 she was joined by her nephew William – and the business they ran together specialised in the sale of “coffee, chicory and drinking chocolate”. William’s son, Henry, joined the business in his turn in 1785 – giving up a medical degree half way through to do so – and brands such as Tukes’ Rich Cocoa, Tukes’ Plain Chocolate and British Cocoa Coffee were launched.

The first Joseph Rowntree arrived in York in 1822, buying a shop in Pavement which he turned into a grocers. Some years later, his eldest son, Henry, bought the Tukes’ cocoa and chocolate business.

He relocated the firm from Castlegate to a collection of buildings – an old iron foundry, a row of cottages and an inn – at Tanner’s Moat in 1864, and in 1869 was joined in the business by his younger brother, Joseph Rowntree II. A chocolate dynasty was born.

Paul spent long days and weeks researching the History of Chocolate in York for his book, and the result is some wonderfully detailed descriptions of the early years of chocolate manufacturing in the city.

“The jumble of improvised buildings at Tanner’s Moat was nothing if not full of character,” he writes. “Apart from the resident parrot there was a somewhat temperamental donkey which was obedient to one man and one man only and a serious peril to everyone else. On its dismissal, deliveries were relegated to a hand cart.”

Night-shift workers, meanwhile, were “sustained by cocoa and pork pies on the firm, and most communications to and from Joseph Rowntree were through a trapdoor in his Lendal Bridge-facing office.”

There is a great deal about the history of Rowntree’s in this book, as you’d expect, including a short chapter written by Joe Dickinson – a Rowntree’s worker for 40 years, Paul says, who has built up an unrivalled collection of Rowntree’s artefacts and memorabilia.

But Paul doesn’t neglect York’s other two great chocolate dynasties either – Terry’s and Craven’s. His account of Terry’s begins with the opening, near Bootham Bar, of a confectionery business by “Messrs William Bayldon and Robert Berry”.

Some time later a farmer’s son from Pocklington, Joseph Terry – who was born in 1763 – arrived in York to become an apprentice apothecary, or chemist.

By 1813 he had set up a business opposite York Castle “selling spices, pickling vinegar, essence of spruce, patent medicines and perfumery”.

In 1823, Terry married Harriet Atkinson, Robert Berry’s sister-in-law, and joined Berry’s business, now in St Helen’s Square. The firm subsequently became known as Terry & Berry.

As for Craven’s – well, their story began in 1833 when Thomas Craven, son of an East Riding farmer, arrived in York as a 16-year-old apprentice at his brother-in-law Thomas Hide’s confectionery business. When his brother-in-law died, Craven set up his own business at High Ousegate.

Paul traces the history of all three firms from their origins, through two world wars, to the present day.

He’s rightly proud of the fact that his is the first book that deals with all three. What really makes it stand out for the casual reader, however – apart from the approachable style and fascinating detail – is the stunning illustrations.

Paul, a writer of local history books, has assembled a superb collection of old photographs and advertising posters which give a wonderful visual shape to the book.

His timing is impeccable too.

The book is due out next month – not long before the opening of York’s new tourist attraction Chocolate: York’s Sweet Story in King’s Square, and only a month before the launch of the York Chocolate Festival on April 6.

Did he plan it that way? Er, no, he admits: it was a happy coincidence. “I only found out about the Sweet Story a few months ago, from an article in the Press.”

Serendipity, it’s called. But it’s good to know that at last York’s extraordinary chocolate story is going to be properly told.

• History of Chocolate in York, by Paul Chrystal & Joe Dickinson, will be published by Pen & Sword in March, priced £14.99.

• Images reproduced courtesy of Paul Chrystal, Joe Dickinson and Pen & Sword.

• Chocolate – York’s Sweet Story will open in King’s Square in April.

The York Chocolate Festival runs from April 6 to 9.

Author Paul Chrystal

A Craven’s poster

An advert for Rowntree’s Gums in trays

A Terry’s poster promoting the export trade